Global News Roundup—June 29-July 6, 2015

This week’s Privacy Tracker weekly legislative roundup includes a recent report on the Email Privacy Act in the U.S., which aims to update the Electronic Communications Privacy Act. Read about recent privacy law actions in the EU, including news from Bulgaria, Austria and France, and in the Asia-Pacific region, read about the Harmful Digital Communications Act in New Zealand and about a new inquiry from a parliamentary committee in New South Wales that is considering “the long-debated need for legal measures that would let Australians sue over series breaches of their privacy.” Plus, catch up on reports on the “all-encompassing privacy policy” and on the winning papers from this year’s Privacy Law Scholars Conference.

LATEST NEWS

The New South Wales Parliament’s Law and Justice Committee “has begun a fresh inquiry into the long-debated need for legal measures that would let Australians sue over serious breaches of their privacy,” IT News reports.

New Zealand’s Harmful Digital Communications Act makes some changes to the scope of the Privacy Act, including closing a “revenge porn loophole where complainants’ ex-partners could distribute intimate photographs or videos without breaching the Privacy Act,” Voxy reports.

A public consultation has been launched to update the Intelligence and Security Act of 2002 in The Netherlands, Bitcoinist.net reports, noting the consultation calls for “mandatory cooperation” to be “required from everyone providing any online services to customers in The Netherlands.

In Russia, Parliament has given its approval to an Internet privacy bill, Vocal Republic reports.

Viet Nam News reports on Minister of Information and Communications Nguyen Bac Son's comments about the draft Law on Information Safety.

R Street looks at the history of the Email Privacy Act, which aims to update the U.S. Electronic Communication Privacy Act of 1986. “It is possible email privacy is next on the ‘to-do list.’ There has been chatter on the Hill that the legislation could receive committee and House floor action in July,” the report states.

In Oregon, a bill prohibiting video voyeurism that won unanimous support in the House and Senate is awaiting the signature of Gov. Kate Brown, Statesman Journal reports.

A new Florida law “shields the footage taken by police body cameras from public view,” The Tampa Tribune reports, noting the new measure includes a privacy exception preventing the disclosure of such videos, including those taken in homes, at hospitals or at the scenes of medical emergencies.

ICYMI

In this Privacy Tracker exclusive, IAPP Westin Research Fellow Arielle Brown, CIPP/US, examines the wholesale transfer of consumer data in the context of corporate mergers, acquisitions and bankruptcy transactions and the "all-encompassing privacy policy" in the context of Section 5 of the FTC Act.

At this year’s Privacy Law Scholars Conference the two winning papers focused on the history of the Social Security number and a path toward a new and better form of consumer-protection regulation. Publications Director Sam Pfeifle talks with the authors, Sarah Igo of Vanderbilt University and Lauren Willis of Loyola Law School, about their work in this feature for The Privacy Advisor.

U.S.

The Federal Communications Commission has marked this fall as the time to hash out what its jurisdiction over Internet privacy will look like specifically, The Hill reports.

Citing a Supreme Court ruling that a thermal imaging device used to detect marijuana in a suspect's home did not require a warrant because it wasn't "in general public use," In-Q-Tel CISO Dan Geer writes for The Christian Science Monitor, "We must change liability law so thoroughly and so substantially that data acquisition is no different from stockpiling combinations of lethal chemicals that grow increasingly dangerous as their varieties increase.”

The American Federation of Government Employees has filed a class-action lawsuit against the Office of Personnel Management in the wake of its massive data breach, The Hill reports.

The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration may sue the state of Utah over access to a controlled-substance database, The Salt Lake Tribune reports.

ASIA-PACIFIC

The Chinese government's new National Security Law "calls for strengthened management over the web and tougher measures against online attacks, theft of secrets and the spread of illegal or harmful information," the Associated Press reports.

As unmanned aircraft popularity burgeons, concerned parties like the New Zealand Privacy Commission and even drone experts believe that regulations like those due to be released next month are necessary, One News reports.

EU

Activist Max Schrems' suit alleging that Facebook's "terms of service and data collection policies violate EU law and their consumer rights" was dismissed by an Austrian court that cited lack of jurisdiction and a blurring of personal and professional use of the service, The Irish Times reports.

A year after the collapse of Bulgaria's fourth largest bank, Parliament has abolished the country's banking privacy laws, Reuters reports.

Isabelle Falque-Pierrotin of the Article 29 Working Party and French Data Protection Authority the CNIL spoke with Wired recently about issues including the CNIL's case against Google.

UK Prime Minister David Cameron plans to move forward with anti-terror surveillance legislation known as the "Snooper's Charter," Politico reports.